Betis lead the way

In amongst all the tabloid dross served up on slow news days for football, once in a while you get summat to read that really catches your eye. Yesterday, Thursday, Diario informacion, the leading Elche local newspaper, published a list of season ticket holders (abonados)  for each of the twenty two Segunda A clubs. Way out in front with a healthy, no make that a mighty impressive 33500, is Real Betis, Seville's second side.

That quantity alone would be sufficient for the faces of most club Chairmen to crease into a smile; the thing is, Real Betis Balompie, to give them their proper title, really haven't been hugely successful in recent seasons. At the end of the 2008/09 campaign, a dismal 1-1 draw at home to Valladolid, doomed Betis to eighteenth place in La Liga and at least a year in the Spanish second division. After the game, quite a few thousand angry "Beticos" took to the streets to voice their dismay, clearly they didn't stay pissed off for too long because most of them renewed their membership.

The difference between Betis at the top and lowly Castellon is a whopping 29600 potential bums on seats. In fairness, the capacity of the Estadio Municipal de Castalia is only 15,500 but still, less than four thousand season tickets is a bit dismal. Villarreal B are excluded from the Segunda A table because their senior squad do the business in La Liga.

Somewhere in the middle of the statistics sit fierce Alicante rivals Hercules and Elche, with near neighbours Real Murcia flogging over ten thousand season tickets for their stunning Nueva Condomina facility to end up seventh best. On the upside, the hardy souls who make the effort to visit the Martinez Valero in Elche, (pictured above), every second Sunday get a whole seven seats each to themselves becasue the club could only manage to shift 5,500 season tickets.

The full list

Team /Abonados

1. Betis 33,500
2. Real Sociedad 17,000
3. Celta de Vigo 13,682
4. Recreativo 13,000
5. Cadiz 12,200
6. Las Palmas 11,364
7. Real Murcia 10,175
8. Cordoba 9,563
9. Rayo Vallecano 9,500
10. Hercules 8,500
11. Cartagena 8,187
12. Levante 5,500
12. Gimnastic 5,500
12. Girona 5,500
12. Elche 5,500
16. Salamanca 5,000
17. Real Union 4,500
18. Numancia 4,484
19. Albacete 4,400
20. Huesca 4,000
21. Castellon 3,900